Large Hardon Collider

[archibaldcrane]

Indeed

[Outlaw]

Could this be the so called "Planet X" first proposed by Percival Lowell? Would be pretty cool if it turned out he was right.

[BerenTebogo]

Yes it is

[myreality]

Apparently a leaked paper (non-peer reviewed) shows that the EM drive works.

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11...-force-of.html

New NASA Emdrive paper shows force of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt in a Vacuum and a low thrust pendulum and tests were at 40, 60 and 80 watts

The PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7k...Y0TVktQlU/view

[Drai]

Apparently a leaked paper (non-peer reviewed) shows that the EM drive works.

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/11...-force-of.html



The PDF:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7k...Y0TVktQlU/view

That's pretty cool, but i'd like to see data from tests in space before I change my optimism from cautious to eager :D

[kareface]

Two orders of magnitude lower for an already low value is pretty low.

[Coren]

Two orders of magnitude lower for an already low value is pretty low.

But it's still nonzero, so yay!

[Greatguardian]

Apparently a leaked paper (non-peer reviewed)

Could've stopped there, really.

[kareface]

Could've stopped there, really.

Physicists post their publications without peer review all the time. There is an entire website dedicated to just that. There is a good reason in many cases to do it. It's likely not the paper that will be published next year, but examining the paper, there isn't any good reason to suspect that the content of the paper it so widely inaccurate to discredit it. The truth is, the drive likely does produce thrust. The drive is amazing when you think about it; there are no other examples of a similar mechanism for producing thrust.

[Greatguardian]

Physicists post their publications without peer review all the time. There is an entire website dedicated to just that. There is a good reason in many cases to do it. It's likely not the paper that will be published next year, but examining the paper, there isn't any good reason to suspect that the content of the paper it so widely inaccurate to discredit it. The truth is, the drive likely does produce thrust. The drive is amazing when you think about it; there are no other examples of a similar mechanism for producing thrust.

I'm legitimately curious about the benefits of "leaking" papers before review. My PhD adviser is a huge fan of the n-ray story and literally nobody in my department that I've talked to will cop to messing around with publications. Crowd-sourcing collaborators seems like a clusterfuck for ethical reasons. Hype-building before the review process has started/completed is potentially worse.

[kareface]

I'd wager 99% of all papers that are posted aren't ones that could generate hype. The three big reasons is 1: to avoid paywalls for content that people can legitimately use. 2: some fields are moving fast and having access to research results sooner help drive the field. Lastly is null publications or verification of existing research results, which frequently won't make the cut for many journals unless the experiment is huge, but it's still very important to release the results. I also think the structure of the peer review system is seriously flawed and while free access to publications without peer review isn't the solution, it is another avenue that is filling holes left by the peer review system. We also need to restructure the ranking and incentive systems, but that's a longer discussion.

[Greatguardian]

I'd wager 99% of all papers that are posted aren't ones that could generate hype. The three big reasons is 1: to avoid paywalls for content that people can legitimately use. 2: some fields are moving fast and having access to research results sooner help drive the field. Lastly is null publications or verification of existing research results, which frequently won't make the cut for many journals unless the experiment is huge, but it's still very important to release the results. I also think the structure of the peer review system is seriously flawed and while free access to publications without peer review isn't the solution, it is another avenue that is filling holes left by the peer review system. We also need to restructure the ranking and incentive systems, but that's a longer discussion.

Pay walls are a pain in the ass, but the whole point of the peer review process is to provide a baseline of credibility by exposing your work to thorough review and critique by independent experts before presenting it to the community at large. Using results that have neither been sufficiently scrutinized nor replicated seems haphazard on a good day. I can't imagine putting that much trust in other teams.

[Psion]

welp. speaking of that peer review:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankob.../#3b7d75a676e2

One of the biggest criticisms has been that the work wasn’t submitted for peer review, and until that happens it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Well, this week that milestone was reached with a peer-reviewed paper. The EM Drive has officially passed peer review.

It’s important to note that passing peer review means that experts have found the methodology of the experiments reasonable. It doesn’t guarantee that the results are valid, as we’ve seen with other peer-reviewed research such as BICEP2. But this milestone shouldn’t be downplayed either. With this new paper we now have a clear overview of the experimental setup and its results.

[myreality]

Woohoo!

[Salodin]

I mean, that's huge. Now we just need people to repeat the results, but assuming the paper isn't fubbing data then we go to go fam.

[myreality]

I mean, that's huge. Now we just need people to repeat the results, but assuming the paper isn't fubbing data then we go to go fam.

Don't jinx it! Swear to god Salodin, I will have Zoner go to your house and talk politics without google!

[Salodin]

Don't tread on me bro

[Zetanio]

Don't jinx it! Swear to god Salodin, I will have Zoner go to your house and talk politics without google!

You fucking stop right there. Never ever threaten that.

[myreality]

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13493

Confirmation of the topology of the Wendelstein 7-X magnetic field to better than 1:100,000


Plasma confinement in early stellarators was disappointing. This was due to poorly confined particle orbits—many of the particle trajectories were not fully confined, even though the magnetic field lines were. If each guiding centre (the point around which the particle performs its rapid gyration) were to stay exactly on the magnetic field line it starts out on, the magnetic surfaces would guarantee good confinement. But for all toroidal magnetic systems, the orbits deviate from the field lines, since the guiding centres drift perpendicular to the magnetic field. This is due to the field-line curvature and magnetic field strength inhomogeneities inherent to the toroidal magnetic topology. In a magnetically confined fusion plasma, the drift is on the order of 10,000 times slower than the particle velocity, but, at 100 ms−1, it will lead to particle losses in less than 1/10 of a second, if the drifts do not average out or stay within the magnetic surface, but instead carry the particle from the inner to the outer magnetic surfaces. This was the case in early stellarator experiments. The tokamak and the reversed-field pinch do not suffer from this problem since their toroidal symmetry makes the particle drifts average out for all the particles and therefore only cause minor excursions from the magnetic surface.

[myreality]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...dest-1.3898740

A team of University of Toronto geoscientists has made a discovery that could lead to a new understanding of ancient life on Earth and other planets: two billion-year-old water, believed to be the oldest H2O ever found, in a mine in Timmins, Ont.

"We thought, 'Wow,'" said Oliver Warr, a postdoctoral researcher and leader of the team.

"Everything about the water is brand new. We are seeing signals in all isotopes that we've identified so far that we've never seen anywhere else."